Made in London

Whenever a movie was set in London, there was always a drive-by of the city's sights: Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and Buck House - and at least one big red bus in the distance. Even last year, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square and Buck House were top of the location pops.

Not any more. The only bona fide London landmark to find favour is that brash, five-year-old newcomer, the London Eye, which seems to have taken over the iconic "This is London" role once played by Piccadilly Circus or Parliament Square.

To judge by the latest list of top locations released by film and media agency Film London (based on the number of hours shot over the past 12 months, rather than the number of different films using a location), today's movie-makers are heading east to Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham and beyond - with even Bromley making it into the Top 10.

What everyone wants, it seems, is not landmarks, but streets, buildings and parks that look like, well anywhere. Film London has done a great job of making the capital more filmfriendly and helping movie-makers find a way through the red tape that used to make it a director's nightmare. But I doubt they anticipated the present trend towards anonymity.

OK, it's great that commercials set in London are being filmed here once again: not so long ago, ad agencies would build mock-ups of Underground stations in Buenos Aires rather than risk the inconvenience - and the cost - of filming in a real London one.

But what about the feature films? And where does all this leave the argument that one in five tourists come to London because they've seen it in a film? Who knows how anyone arrived at that statistic; but, assuming it to have some basis in fact, do Bethnal Green Town Hall and the Island Business Centre in Greenwich really have the same pulling power as Trafalgar Square?

To judge by the new Top 10, a filmmaker's prime requirement is an open or enclosed space that isn't really recognisable: for his Brian Jones biopic, Stoned, director Stephen Woolley used Battersea Park (which has its own film office tucked away in a leafy mews), as did Ol Parker for his romantic comedy, Click.

And Guy Ritchie, finally back on the cinematic turf that made him famous with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, ended up in Bethnal Green Town Hall to shoot interiors for his new crime thriller, Revolver, which stars Jason Statham and Ray Liotta.

"The movie is set in no-man's land," says Ritchie, summing up what directors seem to be looking for in London these days. "It's a kind of transatlantic destination that is really supposed to be illustrative of east meets west somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic."

While some London locations are valued for appearing to be somewhere else, some public-building interiors are regularly co-opted for much the same purpose as they were built.

The City's opulent Freemasons' Hall, where scenes from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were shot, is frequently used by film crews to signify wealth, whether in the last century, the present day, or in some postapocalyptic future when earth has been demolished to make way for a hyperspatial express route.

Heritage has its part to play, but the prestige high-rises that have recently erupted over the Square Mile are also proving popular. the Gherkin has featured on screen many times already, but Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction, recently became the first movie to shoot inside 30 St Mary Axe, with specially built sets on the 19th floor.

In fact, Basic Instinct 2 (which shot, with Sharon Stone, this spring, so was too late to be included in Film London's Top 10) turns out to be the most "London" movie of them all.

You may not immediately recognise the Gherkin from the inside shots, but that, says location manager Keith Hatcher, a 17-year-veteran of the business, is the film's aim. The plan, he adds, is to show what a slick and wonderful metropolis London now is - the whole point is not to show Big Ben!"